Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance Volume 21 Article 5 6-30-2020 The Shifting Appreciation of "Hamlet" in Its Japanese Novelizations: Hideo Kobayashi’s "Ophelia’s Will" and Its Revisions Mori Nakatani Kokoro Research Center, Kyoto University, Japan Follow this and additional works at: https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/multishake Recommended Citation Nakatani, Mori (2020) "The Shifting Appreciation of "Hamlet" in Its Japanese Novelizations: Hideo Kobayashi’s "Ophelia’s Will" and Its Revisions," Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance: Vol. 21 , Article 5. DOI: 10.18778/2083-8530.21.05 Available at: https://digijournals.uni.lodz.pl/multishake/vol21/iss36/5 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Arts & Humanities Journals at University of Lodz Research Online. It has been accepted for inclusion in Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance by an authorized editor of University of Lodz Research Online. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 21 (36), 2020; http://dx.doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.21.05 Mori Nakatani The Shifting Appreciation of Hamlet in Its Japanese Novelizations: Hideo Kobayashi’s Ophelia’s Will and Its Revisions Abstract: Hideo Kobayashi, who is today known as one of the most prominent literary critics of the Showa era in Japan, published Ophelia’s Will in 1931 when he was still an aspiring novelist. This novella was an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, composed as a letter written by Ophelia to Hamlet before her enigmatic death in the original play. While the novel has previously been considered as a psychological novel that sought to illustrate the inner life of the Shakespearean heroine, this paper examines the process by which Kobayashi rediscovered Hamlet as a drama that foregrounds the impenetrability of the characters’ inwardness and highlighted in Ophelia’s Will his diversion from the psychological rendition of Ophelia.